The Gathering of the Gurus: The Smartypants Awards Edition

A wave! A hurricane! A tsunami! An earthquake! Natural disaster metaphors were flying all over the place last night, as Republicans rolled to enormous midterm gains in both the House of Representatives and the Senate (not to mention big pick-ups in governors mansions across the country). At this very moment, some races remain up in the air—most notably the Alaska Senate race, where it appears the incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, may have held off GOP nominee Joe Miller, remarkably, on the strength of a write-in campaign. But that outcome will take a while, perhaps even weeks, to sort out. For the time being, this much is clear: Republicans have picked up at least 60 seats in the House, giving the party a clear majority and ending Nancy Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker, and at least six seats in the Senate.

On Monday morning, about 24 hours before the polls opened across the country, GQ’s Lisa DePaulo assembled an exhaustive survey of 12 of the nation’s top political strategists. (Click here to read it.) Among many other things, we asked them to take a plunge and predict both the final tally in the two chambers of Congress and the night’s biggest upset. Now that the dust has (mostly) settled, it’s time to revisit the survey and see how our Election Gurus performed and hand out some Smartypants Awards. The final reckoning is after the jump.

Question: What will be the final tally in both chambers of Congress when we wake up on Nov. 3?

First prize: (tie) Veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who predicted that his party could "easily lose 60 seats" in the House and suggested that anything fewer than seven lost seats in the Senate would be "a near miracle in this environment." Correct on both counts! Mark McKinnon, a top advisor to the Bush and McCain presidential campaigns, predicted net +60 for the GOP in the House and +8 for the GOP in the Senate. His House projection looks a bit low, and his Senate projection looks a bit high—but he gets to share first prize by virtue of committing to firm numbers.

Cellar dweller: It’s tough to knock Democratic strategist Michael Meehan for trying to put on a brave face ahead of an obviously lousy night when so few of his colleagues had the cojones to dare... But his prediction that his party would lose only 33 seats, hold onto House and witness Pelosi gavel in the next Congress, uh, didn’t quite pan out.

Question: predict the biggest upset of the night?

First prize: Well, no one nailed it outright. But McKinnon predicted a write-in victory for Murkowski, and it looks like that might just happen. Meanwhile, Ed Rollins, Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager in 2008, also picked a Murkowski upset—but he also predicted that Carly Fiorina would upset Barbara Bor in their California Senate race, but Bor won with relative ease.

Second prize: Former DNC official and Hillary Clinton 2008 veteran Tracy Sefl correctly picked Harry Reid’s come-from-behind win in Nevada—but she also predicted that Alex Sink would prevail in the Florida governors race. Technically, this wouldn’t have been an upset, since Sink was ahead in most polls going into Election Day. And in any case, she lost.

Third prize: Trippi, who worked on Jerry Brown’s campaign for California governor, correctly predicted his boss would win. But Brown was polling well ahead of opponent Meg Whitman throughout the final weeks of the campaign, so despite Whitman’s massive dump of cash into the race, it’s hard to fairly call this a big upset. Given the standing of the race yesterday morning, if Whitman had won last night, that would’ve been the upset of the night.

Honorable mention 1: Penn didn’t predict Michael Bennet’s victory in the Colorado Senate race, and indeed that race is still too close to call, but in Penn’s reply to another question in our survey, he made it clear that he believed Bennet would win. So: good call. Maybe. He also predicted that Joe Sestak would win his Senate race over heavily favored Republican Pat Toomey, and though Toomey won, it was much closer than anyone expected. Well, anyone except Penn.

Honorable mention 2: Juleanna Glover, Dick Cheney’s former press secretary, predicted Republican Tom Foley would pull off an upset in the Connecticut governor race. He was leading for most of the night, but late returns appear to have put Democrat Dan Malloy over the top.

Cellar dwellers: Ruffini and former Bush and Cheney assistant Mary Matalin both predicted a victory for third party candidate Tom Tancredo in the Colorado governor race. Democratic winner John Hickenlooper blew away Tancredo by 16 points. Meanwhile, Dana Perino, the former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, predicted that Rep. Barney Frank would lose his re-election bid to Sean Bielat. Frank won by double digits.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 1/4/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 1/4/2014).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast.